


All That Remains

by shadowscribe



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 18:02:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12114201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowscribe/pseuds/shadowscribe
Summary: Not all love stories have happy endings.Alistair died killing the archdemon and Kallian Tabris has to live with it.





	All That Remains

**Author's Note:**

> This could also be titled "Fuck You, Bioware: Why Do You Give Me Feelings" and exists entirely because I had to exorcise it from my head space so that I could move on to the writing projects I'm supposed to be working on. It was written in an immediate 24 hour period and is pretty much straight out of my brain. Little to no editing and I damn near deleted the thing.
> 
> I'm sharing it with you instead. 
> 
> (Sorry?)

The whole of Denerim is on fire and her armor is bloated with so much blood that she can hear it squishing when she moves.

 Some of it is even hers.

 Most of it belongs to the darkspawn that have died beneath her blades as the whole of Denerim burns around them.

And none of it matters.

Maker help her, none of it matters.

Standing here on the top of Fort Drakon with face and hands and hair stained with darkspawn blood and her head still ringing from the glancing blow of the genlock’s sword the only thing that matters is the man standing next to her.

He’s a different man than the one she stumbled upon in the ruins of Ostagar a year ago. _Maker, has it only been a year?_ The man before her now is stronger. Sharper. The last traces of boyhood wiped from his face with betrayal and grief. He’s a man now. A violent, dangerous man.

But she can still see the traces of who he is – of _Alistair_ – lurking beneath the blood and ash. Even now, with the entire world dying around them those beautiful brown eyes still stare at her softly, like he can’t quite believe that she’s here.

And, inexplicably, he is _hers._

 A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.

“I know how I feel about you,” he says and she can feel the leather of her gloves squish beneath the touch of his gauntlet covered hand, a rain of blood pattering to the ground beneath the single point of their joining. “I won’t let you die. Not when I can do something about it.”

“ _No_ ,” she whispers, the word catching in her throat as she stares at him. “ _No_! I can’t. I can’t let you die, Alistair. I can’t…!”

_I can’t go on without you. I’ve never been able to go on without you. From the day we met it’s been you and me. You and me through everything._

_Maker, don’t leave me now. Please, don’t leave me now._

_I love you._

“I love that you think I’m giving you a choice,” Alistair whispers and hauls her across the short distance that separates them, his strength pulling her – stumbling and half falling – over the corpses that lie at their feet. “Loving you – best thing I’ve ever done,” he murmurs into her mouth, his lips soft and slick against her own, the putrid tang of darkspawn blood surging as they stand pressed together.

And then he’s backing away, shoving her, and Kallian goes flying back, tripping over debris at her feet.

She’s up in a moment, slipping and sliding in the river of tainted blood, scrambling for a weapon as she surges to her feet.

She’s quick. Maker knows Kallian has always been quick.

Today Alistair is quicker.

She sees him once more, framed by the rise of the archdemon’s head and the broken spread of its wing, and then the world explodes.

When it is done it is oddly quiet at the top of Fort Drakon, quiet except for the ragged screams tearing out of her throat as she pulls him into her lap, her hands desperate and shaking as she strokes at his blood spattered face and smooths damp auburn hair off his forehead.

How long she sits there, she doesn’t know.

It’s Teagan who finally braves the tower to see what has happened, a handful of weary troops at his back.

And when he takes Alistair from her and lays him on his shield it is only Sten’s iron grip around her waist that keeps her from leaping from the tower to join him.

 

* * *

 

She sits in the room and does nothing.

Anora offers her a sumptuous suite in the palace but Kallian ignores her.

 Instead, she sits in the room that Arl Eamon had given her – had given _them_ – and does nothing. She sits and lets the blood drip from her armor and form puddles on the floor. She sits until it dries, heavy and scratchy against her skin. She sits with Barkspawn’s head in her lap.

She doesn’t stroke his head or rub his ears.

She can’t even look at him.

She can’t do anything.

So she sits in the room and stares at nothing.

There’s nothing left to see anymore.

 

* * *

 

It’s Wynne and Zevran who finally get her out of her armor.

She’s not sure how long it’s been since Alis… since the _archdemon_ died. A minute. A day. An age.

_Forever_.

And it’s just the beginning.

They talk to her. They ask her questions.

She doesn’t answer.

She can’t.

She can’t even blink.

She stares at them, unseeing, unfeeling as they pull her armor and clothes from her body. Zevran has to cut it off and she doesn’t even flinch as the tip of his knife runs through the leather. She wishes he wasn’t so careful. She wishes that this man, her friend, would finally finish the job he had been hired for.

Sten brings the tub and fills it. The water is too hot against her skin but she doesn’t say. She can’t.

They don’t leave her to bathe alone.

She almost wishes they would, just so she can slide beneath the surface and never come up again.

 

* * *

 

They try to feed her. She doesn’t eat.

They try to get her to drink something. Tea. Water. _Something_.

She locks her teeth and lets it dribble down her chin.

 “Leave her be, poor child,” Wynne’s soft voice says. “She’ll eat something eventually.”

She won’t though. She’ll never eat again.

 

* * *

 

It’s not until they try to put her to bed that she fights.

And, _Maker_ , she fights.

She kicks and punches, growling and snarling like a rapid animal as she tries to throw herself away. There’s blood on her hands. She can feel it, and flesh beneath her nails.

But there’s three of them and one of her and even though they’re being careful and she has nothing to lose one of them is a qunari and she is just an elf, made tiny by genetics and malnourishment.

So they put her to bed. Eventually.

As soon as her head hits the pillow she breaks, an awful keening sob ricocheting around in her chest.

It’s been weeks since they slept here. Weeks since they made love in this bed – a frantic, heady fucking as they prepared to leave for Redcliff. Weeks since they lay in a tangle of limbs and skin and slept fitfully beneath the weight of the archdemon’s growing presence.

Weeks.

And Denerim has burned in the meanwhile.

Yet she can still smell him there. A faint whiff of armor polish and musky-sweet sweat.

Kallian clutches the pillow and screams until someone bangs on the door.

Sten makes them go away.

 

* * *

 

She sits in the chair again.

She’s afraid to stay in the bed. Afraid that if she stays there too long that it will smell of nothing but her and Barkspawn.

Kallian’s not sure she could bear it if that happened.

So she sits.

They keep watch on her. An ever revolving series of minders. Wynne and Zevran and Sten and Leliana and Oghren. Even Teagan comes once. He sits in the chair opposite her and says nothing as time passes in a march of shadows across the wall.

When he leaves he presses something into her hand and folds her fingers over it.

It’s a locket on a fine gold chain.

That night she doesn’t make it to the bed. Instead, she lies crumpled on the floor with Barkspawn’s flank beneath her cheeks and the locket clutched to her face as if she could crawl inside of it and disappear forever.

 

* * *

 

On the third day she passes out trying to climb into the bed.

When she wakes they force tepid broth down her throat.

She hates them for it.

 

* * *

 

“It’s a sodding mess out there,” Oghren grunts as he falls into the chair next to her. “But they’ve finally burnt all the ruddy corpses.”

Kallian tips her head and stares at him. Is this how he felt when he lost Branka? The first time, that is, when she vanished into the Deep Roads and left him behind. Not when they found her  later. She imagines that the second loss of his wife had been a relief in the face of her cruelty and madness.

She tries to imagine a scenario in which Alistair’s… in which she would have been relieved.

She can’t.

“If you’re gonna sit there at least have a sodding drink.” Oghren shoves the bottle into her hand.

Kallian stares at it for a moment and then drinks until everything goes dark.

 

* * *

 

It’s the beginning of a pattern. A ritual. Oghren comes with the setting of the sun and they sit in their chairs and stare – half at each other and half at the fire – while the perpetually tipsy dwarf offers a sentence or two of profanity laden commentary on the state of the city. And then they drink. She’s not sure where all the alcohol comes from. No doubt he’s nicked a fair bit of it from Eamon’s stores.

She doesn’t care.

They sit and they drink until the fire is low and there’s nothing left.

There’s nothing left anyway but at least now it feels honest.

Each night ends in a blissful, empty blackness. Each day begins in the bed with the pillow and the locket and a headache that she prays might actually kill her.

It doesn’t.

On the sixth such day Wynne and Oghren fight. It’s a good fight. No fists but there’s enough insults to go around. Everything from “ _Despicable drunkard_!” to “ _Sodding uptight witch!_ ”. She’s not sure who wins. Zevran hands her a bottle behind Wynne’s back and by the time the shouting stops everything is fuzzy and numb.

Everything but the tears burning her cheeks.

 

* * *

 

“This was not a _play_!”

It’s the first time she speaks since the fight on top of Fort Drakon. It hurts, her throat screaming from the disuse but she gets the words out anyway. She stands before her chair, chest heaving and heart hammering so hard in her ears that she can hardly hear herself think, and stares at the bright red print of her hand on Leliana’s cheek.

“Of course it was a play,” Leliana says, motioning back whoever has come to the doorway at the crack of Kallian’s hand. “It was full of adventure and interesting characters woven together in an enchanting story.”

“We are more than a _story_ put on for some noble’s amusement,” Kallian spits hoarsely. She’s so angry that she thinks she might kill Leliana with her bare hands – wring the life out of the bard with a violent twist of her fingers.

Leliana smiles sadly. “We are all stories in the end and this – _this_ was the best type of story: a love story.”

The blow of Leliana’s words hits harder than a blow across her face would have and Kaillian snarls, half-screaming, half-sobbing as she clings to the edge of the tea table. “I doubt they’re gossiping about _love_ in the streets.”

Honestly, she doubts that there is much gossiping in the streets, period. They’re too busy celebrating. She can hear it, even here, in the far reaches of Eamon’s city estate.

“There are many stories in the streets,” Leliana tells her and wraps an arm around Kallian’s shoulders. “Most of them are even true.”

The delicate floral scent of Leliana’s skin is comforting, in its own way, but it isn’t sun warmed steel and armor polish. It isn’t Alistair.

And it never will be again.

 

* * *

 

It appears that the price for getting to drink herself into unconsciousness each night is eating with Wynne. Or that’s what the elderly mage says when she shows up a half hour to sundown with a tray of food. It’s nothing but soup and hot rolls and a cup of tea and it has the audacity to smell good. Kallian hates it.

She doesn’t eat.

Not the first night. Or the second.

On the third Wynne sits across from her and watches her with a stern look and pinched lips. Gone is the woman who teased Alistair for watching the sway of Kallian’s hips. Gone is the woman who even attempted to break them up in the early dies, who tried to tell them that it was too dangerous to get involved – that their hearts would win out over their duty.

Maker, she wishes that Wynne had been right.

“Enough, Kallian,” Wynne finally announces firmly, if gently. “You have to eat. You have to…”

“I _have to_ , do I?” Kallian rasps, glaring. “I think you’ll find that with the archdemon dead there is a total dearth of things that I _have_ to do.”

Wynne stares for a moment, stunned. It’s only the third time she’s spoken in… since Alistair d…. since the archdemon was destroyed.

“He wouldn’t want you to do this,” the mage finally murmurs. “Alistair would want you to _live_ , child.”

Kallian closes her eyes against the weight of his name.

“He’s _dead_ ,” she whispers and holds the locket so tightly that the edges cut into her palm. “He’s _gone_. You have no idea what he would or would not want.”

The sound that leaves Wynne’s lips is something between laughter and tears. “Oh, child… of course I do,” she murmurs and gathers up Kallian’s free hand. “That poor boy – that _man_ – he loved you. He loved you, Kallian. He _loved_ you. More than life itself, _he loved you_.” She squeezes her hand. “He wanted you to _live_. He wanted you to be happy. To be smart and daring and lovely and _alive_.”

She sobs into the wood of the table until there’s nothing left. Until her eyes are burning and her fingers are numb from where she hangs on to the locked and on to Wynne’s hand. She sobs until her chest is so tight she can’t breathe, until her throat is so swollen that she can’t make more noise.

Wynne half forces, half helps her to drink a cup of tea and then helps her into the bed.

It takes an eternity of desperate searching for Kallian to find a shred of his scent buried amongst the pillows and linens.

She doesn’t sleep that night.

 

* * *

 

The funeral is as private as they can make it, which means that it’s held in front of the chantry with the whole of Denerim in attendance. If they’d asked her she would have held it in Redcliff, there where Alistair had played as a child, and beneath a diminished number of prying eyes. But they didn’t ask her. Or maybe they had and she simply hadn’t heard them.

She cries, silently, in the bath as she gets ready and then no more. Not as she binds the long white gold strands of her hair back into a severe braid, not as she pulls on her clothes and straps on her armor. A new set, of course, the old had been completely destroyed. She’s not sure whether she hates that or is grateful for it.

She’s not sure she could make it through the day wearing leathers that bore the stain of his blood.

She’s not sure she can go on with the knowledge that another piece of him, of his memory, has been dismissed from the world.

They do not give her back her weapons and that’s for the best, she supposes, though she hates them for it. More than a little.

The sun is hot and bright. Auspicious, perhaps, or at least that is how Anora spins it as she speaks over the body laid out on a pyre. Kallian is careful to focus on the bit of ground just in front of it, refusing to look at the form encased in brightly polished steel. It’s the wrong steel, the wrong polish. She can smell the difference from here. This is some…frippery; a  nobleman’s attempt to pretty up the acts of violence that make the world turn.

It’s ridiculous.

She doesn’t listen to what the Queen is saying, not until she hears a round of applause breaking through the air like thunder and Zevran nudges her shoulder gently. “She calls for you, my friend,” he explains to her blank look.

It takes effort to stand, but she does.

She stands and walks to the pyre in slow, careful steps and as she walks the entire marketplace goes quiet. Even Anora is silenced by her approach, the wide-eyed queen watching warily as she draws up next to the body in its new set of armor and its too-fancy polish.

Were it not for the emptiness inside of her chest and the warmth of the locket against her skin she might have believed Alistair to be sleeping. But the longer she stares at him, at the sweep of his jaw and the curve of his lips, at the arch of his eyebrows and the line of his nose, the more she knows that to not be true. His skin is a little too pale, a little too gray against the deep red of his hair and no matter how hard she stares he is utterly, absolutely, devastatingly still.

Her fingers are shaking as she opens the small pouch at her hip and pulls out the bit of fabric she had placed there. Carefully she unfolds it, twisting and turning it beneath her fingers until its cargo is revealed in the palm of her hand.

It’s smaller and drier than the day he gave it to her, nothing but a ghost of its former beauty. It’s still her most valued possession.

Carefully, she tucks the dried rose into the curve of his fingers.

“You were my rose too,” she whispers. “You were always my rose. You…” she clenches her jaw and looks away from his face, unable to look at him. At the empty shell masquerading as the man she loves. “It should have been me, you bastard. If one of us had to lie on this pyre it should have been me.”

_I love that you think that I’m giving you a choice._

Her shoulders shake silently.

“It should have been me. Or… Maker, _it should have been me_! It should have _Riordan_! It should have even been _fucking Loghain_! I should have…!”

Zevran’s hand at her elbow stops her from collapsing into the street and she clings to him for a moment, shaking and unsteady before the silence of Denerim and drowning beneath the weight of her regrets.

She should have found a way to make Loghain a warden. She should have not been so horrified by Morrigan’s offer. She should have tried harder to convince Alistair to take the chance.

But she knows, she _knows_ , that they would have never rested easy in a world where Loghain still lived. Even less in which his sins were forgotten in the heroics of ending the Blight. And she does not hold with rape. Not even to a shadow of it. Not even for the chance to escape death.

“It should have been me,” she whispers again. His skin his cold and frozen beneath her lips and she hates it. “I love you and it should have been me.”

She stands at his side until the moon rises and her knees finally give out beneath her.

Sten carries her back to the estate.

She doesn’t sleep in the bed.

There’s nothing left for her there. Not anymore.

 

* * *

 

“I could go with you.”

She and Sten sit at the table with a plate between them. It once held a dozen cookies, still warm and soft from the ovens. Now it holds nothing but crumbs and even that will not be for much longer. Sten carefully licks his finger and then presses it to each crumb in turn, scooping them all from the plate to his mouth.

“You could,” he acknowledges.

She could.

She could get on the ship with him and leave. Leave Ferelden. Leave the Grey Wardens. Leave everything she has ever known and loved behind. Everything but Sten. Silent and strong and with a secret passion for cookies and art, he could whisk her away to a world unlike anything she has ever experienced. A world of heat and spice, where a farmer is a farmer and a merchant is a merchant and everyone knows their place. Knows exactly what they are, who they are, and where they belong.

“You could,” he repeats quietly. “You would like Par Vallon and I would like to see you there. They would honor you and _him_. It would be beautiful, for a time.” Sten looks at her over the empty plate, the violet-blue of his eyes completely unreadable. “But I think, _kadan_ , that one day you would wake up and realize that you were in a cage. That you were trapped in a world where a farmer is only a farmer and a soldier is only a soldier. _Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun._ Some things cannot be changed. Not even for you.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I do not think I could stand seeing you in a cage, _kadan_.”

Kallian stares, her heart suddenly pounding in her throat.

“Thank you,” she finally whispers and hopes that he understands.

Sten tilts his head. “You found my sword. You gave me back my soul. You gave me a place in this fight. I owe you much.”

She shakes her head frantically. “You owe me _nothing_ ,” she hisses.

Sten smiles at that and it lights up his eyes. “Some debts cannot be discarded,” he growls gently. “If there is ever a time when you have need of me, you have been to send for me. I will come.”

It is said with a firm finality and Kallian knows that she could argue until the world turns to dust and yet she will never change the qunari’s mind. She’s not sure she wants to. It touches a part of her, something painful there in the empty ruin of her chest.

She nods, not trusting herself to speak.

“Farewell, _kadan_.” Sten hesitates for a moment and then leans down to press a gentle kiss against her forehead. It is there and gone in a moment, just like Sten himself.

When she finally overcomes the shock to open her eyes she is met with a small portrait set in a delicate metal pendant. The portrait itself is water damaged and she touches it with gentle reverence, remembering the day she had found it. Remembering that she had gifted it to him, laughing that he should desire such a ruined thing for himself and pleased all the same that he would accept a gift from her.

“Good-bye, Sten,” she whispers to the empty room.

When she lies down to sleep that night the pendant has been strung on the fine gold chain, joining the burnished metal of the locket hanging over her heart.

 

* * *

 

Zevran lounges like a cat before the fire with one arm flung over his eyes and the other draped across Barkspawn, his fingers rubbing idly at the brindled coat. The marabi in question is sitting on her feet and the stub of his tail is moving so fast that she half expects his entire back end to fall off at any moment. The scene is aching in its familiarity, though the men are different and there are more clothes.

Maker.

Kallian drains the brandy sitting in her cup in one long swallow and spares a glance for the bottle sitting on the table. It’s nearly empty. The rich, burning liquid has long since been swallowed by both assassins in the quiet of the room. Her more than him.

“What will you do now, my friend?” Zevran drawls softly. He looks languid and half asleep as he arches into the warmth but she knows better. “I heard that Anora offered to make you the Bann of the Alienage. It would be good to have an elf amongst the nobility, yes?”

She pours herself another drink.

Maker, if they’re going to talk about this then she might need to go steal the bottle that Eamon keeps in the locked drawer of the desk in his study that he thinks no one knows about. It’s the next closest bottle, she reckons.

“Yes. It would,” she says tightly after a rather gulping swallow. “I pointed her in Shianni’s direction.”

The thump of Zevran’s arm hitting the floor is enough to startle Barkspawn, who makes his displeasure known. Loudly. “ _No!_ You mean to say that you refused her?”

She can’t decide if he sounds horrified or proud.

“I would make a terrible Bann,” she admits after a moment and holds her hand up to stall him when valiant protests rise to his lips. “I would. I am neither neat nor tolerant and would likely murder the first member of the Landsmeet to call me a rabbit.”

“It would be no more than they deserve.”

Something that feels suspiciously like a smile pulls at her lips and she hates it, hates that somehow she can still smile. That she can still _want_ to smile. “Quite true,” she agrees, “But Shianni would be the better choice. She is calmer and steadier. Kinder. I would take vengeance. She will find justice.” She has no patience for justice. If she had it might have been Loghain that died upon the tower instead.

Zevran grunts in disagreement and twists the long lines of his frame so that he might look up at her through the fringe of his lashes. “You sell yourself short, my friend.”

Kallian sighs and sips the rest of her drink away, the smooth surface of the glass held to her lips in cool benediction. “I can’t stay here, Zev, I can’t stay in this city,” she admits softly.

And she can’t.

Andraste forgive her, but she can’t.

She can’t stay in this place where they laughed and they kissed and they loved. She can’t stay in this place where they fought and they bled. She can’t stay in this place where he died.

“So where will you go?”

She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Amaranthine, I suppose. The archdemon may be dead but there are still plenty of darkspawn out there and I _am_ a Grey Warden.” The Blight may be over but there are always darkspawn. Perhaps not in the numbers that still scramble across the face of Ferelden like packs of rapid dogs but she doubts the Maker is going to up and forgive everyone in her life time.

“Then I had best give these back to you, yes?”

A familiar weight is laid gently in her lap and Kallian gasps, the glass slipping from fingers suddenly gone numb in shock. Zevran laughs softly and catches the glass neatly, transferring it to the table top with a sleight of hand that makes every thief in Thedas weep.

She doesn’t notice. She doesn’t _care_.

Hands shaking, she curls her fingers around the hilts, hefting each weapon and savoring the familiar weight of them against her palms and running up her arms. It’s all she can do to not burst into tears.

“Do the others know you’re giving them back?”

Zevran shrugs. “Wynne is perhaps less than pleased,” he allows, “but it is time. You are not a woman that can live or die without steel in her hands.”

She doesn’t even bother to sleep that night.

Instead, she sits cross-legged on the floor before the fire and stares at the naked blades clutched in her hands.

Deciding.

 

* * *

 

In the end she leaves in the pre-dawn gray, slipping out of Eamon’s estate without notice or farewell. The Arl’s gratitude ran deep enough to let her abuse the hospitality of his house, even after she had refused to force Alistair into kingship, but no deeper. He will be glad to see the last of her, of that she has no doubts, and frankly she is glad to be done with him and his house. His house, just like Denerim, is full of too many ghosts.

Anora is going to furious that she’s skipped town before the official day of celebration but Kallian can’t bring herself to care. If she has to listen to Loghain’s daughter give some rousing speech of gratitude to her father’s killer she’s liable to laugh in the woman’s face. At the very least. Maker knows what she’d do to the first asshole to try and call her the Hero of Ferelden. Kill them, probably. A fitting end for someone who dared to forget about the man decomposing on a slab so that they might have the opportunity to wine and dine like the pompous fools that they are.

Kallian shakes her head and slips out into the city.

They have rebuilt much in the last few weeks. The bodies have all been carted away and burnt. The broken marketplace stalls likewise turned into kindling and cleared away. Broken doors have been repaired and windows have been either fixed or boarded over. The chantry garden has been freshly turned and a soft haze of green glimmers above the dirt in the fading moonlight. The city is rebuilding. Healing. All too soon the atrocities that happened here will no doubt be forgotten or at the very least banished to the realm of occasional nightmares.

She doesn’t know how she feels about that.

“Do you still intend to go to the Wardens?” A familiar form peels itself away from the shadows of the city gate and Kallian stops in the center of the road, turning to face the assassin that falls in beside her.

“Yes.”

“Do you think they would mind if I tagged along?”

She stares. “You want to become a Warden?” she asks numbly, the words sticking like broken glass in her throat.

Zevran laughs softly. “Ah, you misunderstand me. No, my friend, I do not wish to become a Grey Warden. There are some bodily fluids that are too much, even for me.” His eyebrows wiggle and she chokes on the sudden giggle that flutters in her throat. “The Crows will no doubt try to come after me again,” he adds slowly, looking off to the side just a little, his face smoothing into something unreadable as he stares into the lightening shadows. “It would be useful, I think, to be rattling around in a castle full of fierce fighters. Plus, I am not so bad at killing darkspawn, even if I am not a Warden.”

She looks at him for a long time. “You don’t need to convince me if you want to come with, Zev.”

The smile he offers her holds none of his usual swagger. Instead, it’s a little sad as he asks, “Don’t I?”

Kallian wants to tell him no, wants to rant and rave and explain how utterly ridiculous that sounds. He is Zevran, her Zev, and he can come with her if he wants to. The Blight is over, after all, and he doesn’t answer to her anymore. The debt has long since been forgiven.

And yet…

Wynne, staying behind to try her hand at politics in favor of the mages, turning down offers from both the Circle Tower and the Grey Wardens.

Sten, already gone and sailing upon the sea to return to his home, his mission completed.

Oghren, who several days ago announced that he was taking himself on a grand tour of all of the bars and taverns in Ferelden. She doesn’t doubt that he’ll actually do it.

Leliana, who plans to return to both the chantry and to Orlais having – for now, at least – fulfilled what she believes the Maker has asked of her.

Morigan, who left before it was even over. Who abandoned them all when Kallian would not force Alistair’s hand. Or cock.

All that remains is her and Barkspawn, two where it should have been three.

And now Zevran.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Kallian’s voice breaks.

Zevran smiles, slow and easy, something heavy resting in his eyes. She doesn’t acknowledge it. She can’t. Not now. Not yet. Maker, maybe not ever.

“You are a beautiful woman, my friend. How else am I supposed to look at you?” The quirk of his lips says that he knows. That he understands. And that that’s okay.

* * *

 

Above her heart the pendant and the portrait clink together, warm against her skin.


End file.
